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Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 172 (2016) 411–419 bki brill.com/bki Recent Dutch-Language Publications Harry A. Poeze kitlv/Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies [email protected] Ewald Vanvugt, Roofstaat. Wat iedere Nederlander moet weten. Amsterdam: Nijgh & Van Ditmar/Top Notch, 2016, 856 pp. isbn 9789038801278. Price: eur 39.99 (paperback). Ewald Vanvugt (1943) is a prolific and important author who challenges the Dutch government and society to face their dark and bloody past, in particular that of the Dutch East and West Indies. Since 1985 he has been publishing work on the role of opium in colonial society, the robbery of art and cultural treasures which continue to fill Dutch museums, the occupation of Bali, and studies of the critics of various colonial schemes. He collected and combined the early books in Zwartboek van Nederland overzee (2002, 352 pp), which was expanded as Nieuw zwartboek van Nederland overzee (2011, 576 pp.). Now, in Roofstaat he presents his definitive encyclopaedia of Dutch historical crimes through the ages, in more than 850 pages, including and expanding the Zwartboek titles. In more than 150 separate chronological chapters, he discusses the events that transgressed the rules of humanity. Vanvugt certainly expresses moral indig- nation, but far more than that. His work is meticulous and is solidly founded on the historical accounts, from old sources and contemporary historians, as 1450 references and 35 pages of bibliography attest. Roofstaat contains a litany of violence, cruelty, perjury, broken agreements, and unscrupulousness. With their privateering and piracy, the first culprits are the East and West Indies Company, voc and wic. Soon both engaged in the slave trade on a grand scale, with the voc dependent on the input of slave labour. With the Dutch state tak- ing over the Netherlands Indies colony in 1815 a new era began—with ruthless killings, made easier by the superior fire power of the Dutch army that brought about the Pax Neerlandica. At first the costly colonial enterprise was financed by the forced labour of the Indonesian population and the official exploita- tion of an opium monopoly, which was established and maintained through the promotion of its use among Indonesians and Chinese. During ‘pacification’ the Indies treasures, when not looted or destroyed, were confiscated and sent © harry a. poeze, 2016 | doi: 10.1163/22134379-17202027 This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported (cc-by-nc 3.0) License. Downloaded from Brill.com09/29/2021 04:27:23AM via free access 412 recent dutch-language publications to the motherland. Vanvugt rightfully points out the erotic and exotic attrac- tion of the tropical colonies which lured western men to the East, offering an escape from rigid Dutch norms. There is thus not much to be proud of, and the writing on the colonial past has for the most part covered up the violent outrages. According to Van- vugt, Dutch historians of today have purposefully evaded these sensitive sub- jects. This may now be too general an observation. Recently, solid books on the opium trade and East Indies slavery have been published. The monograph of Gerrit Knaap also offers new evidence on the military exploits of the voc. And already for some years the pressure to study the Dutch military actions in the 1945–1949 decolonisation war has been rising. Gert Oostindie’s Soldaat in Indonesië collects the irrefutable evidence that war crimes were committed by the Dutch troops on a considerable scale. And new proof of this is forth- coming. But Vanvugt does not deal with these decolonisation conflicts in a commensurate way. His chronological approach sometimes leads to repeti- tion and omission—the Aceh War, for instance, does not get the attention it merits. And Vanvugt does not address a serious general question about his approach. What are his criteria to devote a chapter of Roofstaat to a particular event? Especially for the sixteenth through the nineteenth centuries, present- day norms and values cannot be applied unsparingly. However, even then a number of basic values were adhered to, and cases of excessive violence, like Coen’s massacre of Banda’s inhabitants, were reprimanded by the voc board and censured by contemporaries. Thus there was clearly a category of action that fell beyond contemporary norms. It would have been helpful for Vanvugt to discuss his selection criteria for the events he includes. But this issue aside, Vanvugt deserves ample praise for the results of decades of research. Willem Anton Engelbrecht, Pieter Johannes van Herwerden and Sjoerd de Meer (eds), Voorbij het eind van de wereld. De ontdekkingsreis van Jacob le Maire en Willem Cornelis Schouten, 1615–1617. Zutphen: Walburg Pers, 2015, 35+xxvi+[19]+235+xv+265 pp. isbn 9789057305238. Price: eur 74.14. (hard- back). [Reprint of volume 49 of the Werken van de Linschoten-Vereeniging, originally published in 1945 by Martinus Nijhoff, Den Haag.] Four hundred years ago, on 29 January 1616, the small Dutch ship ‘Eendracht’ discovered and rounded Cape Hoorn. It was part of the endeavour of the wealthy Amsterdam merchant Isaac le Maire to find the way to the mysteri- ous Zuidland for which he founded the Australische Compagnie. It was a secret expedition, as he was in conflict with the voc and his exploits infringed upon Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 172 (2016) 411–419 Downloaded from Brill.com09/29/2021 04:27:23AM via free access recent dutch-language publications 413 the navigation monopoly the voc had been granted by the Dutch Republic. Australia was not found, but at last, after anchoring at many exotic islands, the Moluccas and Batavia were reached. The reception was unfriendly: the ship was confiscated. Upon return the ship’s journey caught the imagination of many. Two journals were published: ‘Journael ofte beschrijvinghe van de won- derlicke reyse’,by captain Schouten (first in 1618) and ‘Spieghel der Australische navigatie’, by expedition leader Jacob le Maire, son of Isaac (first in 1622). The journals were very popular: many reprints, and translations in at least six lan- guages. The standard edition of the journals was published in a two-volume edition in 1945 by the Linschoten-Vereeniging. Part of the commemoration now of the first passage four centuries ago is the photomechanical reprint of the 1945 edition, with a solid new introduction by Sjoerd de Meer in which he updates the information on the three years’ journey. The reprint was supported by two Dutch foundations: de Stichting Nederlandse Kaap Hoorn-vaarders, and the Stichting 400 Jaar Kaap Hoorn. Hans Derks, Verslaafd aan opium. De voc en het Huis van Oranje als drugs- dealers. Amsterdam: Athenaeum-Polak&Van Gennep, 2015, 139 pp. isbn 9789025307097. Price: eur 17.50 (paperback). This small book is based on the voluminous scholarly study of 850 pages: His- tory of the opium problem. The assault on the East, ca. 1600–1950, published in 2012 by Brill. Hans Derks has selected and abridged from it the parts on the role of the Dutch Republic, the voc, and since 1815, the Kingdom of the Nether- lands and its colonial rulership in the East Indies. He characterises the voc as a military trade organisation, basing itself on violence to obtain a monopoly. The belligerent policy of the stadtholders of the House of Orange was in no small measure responsible for this course of action. To find a way out of its economic distress the voc around the 1640s discovered opium and actively engaged in trade and promotion of the use of opium. Thus the Dutch—later copied by the British—purposefully created an opium problem to foster their colonial enterprise. Enormous profits were made, and by widespread corrup- tion a lot of high officials, in the Netherlands and the Indies, managed to amass enormous riches. Among them was the House of Orange, with Stadtholder Willem v—consistently nicknamed ‘De Dikke’ (The Fat) by Derks—and King Willem i. The voc depended for an essential part on its opium income, turn- ing the Indies into a narco-military state. An opium infrastructure was set up with an Amfioen Sociëteit in the 1740s, which was later supplanted by the Nederlandsche Handel-Maatschappij (1824) and the Opiumregie. The disas- Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 172 (2016) 411–419 Downloaded from Brill.com09/29/2021 04:27:23AM via free access 414 recent dutch-language publications trous social effects of the opium addiction were belittled or rationalised as the opium income was essential to ensure the colonial rule—10 to 15% of its income was derived from it. In total about 80 billion in present-day euros were extracted from the Indies colony. Derks has written a provocative book, and evades polished academic discourse to make his arguments. These are for the greater part convincing and worth serious discussion. Jacqueline Bel, Bloed en rozen. Geschiedenis van de Nederlandse literatuur 1900– 1945. Amsterdam: Bert Bakker, 2015, 1141 pp. isbn 9789035130470. Price: eur 65.00 (hardback). The Nederlandse Taalunie (Language Union) is the authoritative institute cre- ated by the Dutch and Flemish governments to follow developments in the Dutch language and to safeguard and promote issues concerning the Dutch language. One of its initiatives, supported by both governments in 1997, com- missioned a new ‘Geschiedenis van de Nederlandse literatuur’ (History of the Dutch literature). It was an ambitious project, and resulted in an eight-volume series. Up till now seven volumes have been published; the penultimate one came out in 2006, and the last one is due to appear this year. Jacqueline Bel, a Professor of Dutch literature at Free University in Amsterdam, has recently published her account on the years 1900 till 1945, and needed more than 1,100 pages to do so.

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